Green roof and green walls for City of London hotel

The Mint hotel near the Tower of London hopes to be one of the most sustainable buildings in London after the unveiling of its green roof and flowering walls.


The living wall is the tallest in Europe, extending the full height of the hotel’s internal courtyard up to the 11th floor.

The walls can be viewed through the glass roof in the reception area and the plants extend upwards from the 9th floor to a green roof.

The green walls will reduce temperatures and water run-off problems. The system is made entirely from recycled plastic and it is hoped this will ultimately work hand-in-hand with a grey-water recycling system.

A total of 4,100 modules were fitted to create the living walls and each module contains 45 planted cells 70mm deep.

Each module is fixed onto a recycled plastic mounting strip and fitted to a steel frame at 500mm centres, which in turn is attached to the rendered wall. The modules were then fixed to the frame, starting from the bottom of the wall and working to the top.

More than 180,000 individual plants were used in the modules and the 40 different species of plants are all evergreen.

Frosts Landscape Construction designed and built the walls working closely on the construction with Bennetts Associates and Laing O’Rourke.

Alison Brown

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